Harriman Farms Planning For New Growth In Business, In The Greenhouse And In The Field

Flowers, Plants To Be Available For Opening On Tuesday, April 1st

by Michael Stanley

Staff Writer

Harriman Farms, owned and operated by William Harriman and his sister, Shelley Harriman, is currently making preparations for the upcoming spring planting season. (Staff Photo) With the first official day of spring now less than two weeks away (March 20th), brother and sister duo William and Shelley Harriman of Harriman Farms are hard at work in the greenhouse and in the dirt at Harriman Farms, west of Gosport.

“I’ve never read a farmer’s almanac, I know there are people who put stock in those, but I don’t,” William said when asked how he know when to begin planting for the season. “It’s published the year before, so it’s kind of like paying attention to your horoscope, it’s kind of ridiculous.

Instead, William follows the tradition of refraining from planting frost sensitive crops until after the beginning of May.

“We’ll follow that unless it’s a week before May 1st and the 10- day forecast looks like it’s going to be fine and we have plants that if we wait a week would be too tall anyway, then we’ll plant them and take a chance... if we have to replant, we’ll replant.”

Harriman Farms will again feature a variety of wholesale vegetables to be sold to major distributors, while also supplying local stores in Babbs and Sav-ALot. The front porch area of the building, which faces State Road 67 North, and greenhouse will be stocked full of produce and plants.

“We have about 20,000 cabbages nearly ready to go into the ground in about a month,” Shelley added. “William figures out when to start the produce plants for his field, but it’s always a guess every year.”

Shelley has remained busy in recent weeks starting a variety of flowers and bedding vegetable plants inside the greenhouse.

“We’ve been doing the greenhouse operation for quite a number of years, offering annuals, bedding plants, vegetables, hanging baskets, combination pots and a little bit more of everything. We’re also adding perennials, which we really haven’t done in the past, so we’re excited to break into that territory and see what we can do there,” Shelley said. “William started it when he was in sixth grade, so he’s done it for quite a few years and I’ve been involved primarily in the last three years. So we’re both owners of the business now, I’ve been taking over the greenhouse myself and really enjoy it. I like the plants and flowers a lot and getting to meet all of the customers is fun, too.”

“It’s been great,” William added, “she’s a lot better at the more detailed, record keeping part of the businesses. She just does a really good job and it’s nice to have somebody I can count on, trust, and ask for their input.

“I think it works well, us working together,” Shelley said. “We have similar goals and expectations of where we want to be in terms of quality and all of those important aspects to a business.”

The farm added a larger greenhouse in 2013, which although currently empty will allow the Harrimans to expand for future growth.

“Now we’re going to be able to space things out more appropriately, grow more for the produce farm and have things better organized to create better displays,” Shelley said. “It will give us healthier plants as well.”

Shelley completed a Master Gardener class in 2013 in an effort to improve upon her craft.

“I spend a lot of time researching and thinking about how much of things to plant so we’re on schedule a little better and we have the right amount of plants available for our customers at the right time,” she noted. “We’re just trying to do things better.”

Seeds were planted in January and Shelley says the small amount of plants within the greenhouse at the time allowed her to partition off a section to better keep cold air out of the controlled environment.

“We made it through the roughest part of it, but we’ll see, the weather is unpredictable,” she said.

William noted that prepaying on propane helped the farm’s bottom line, along with his snow plowing business, which blossomed in the winter, tripling his traditional workload.

“I’m making plans, deciding which crops go into which fields, ordering supplies like seeds, plastic and irrigation lines,” William said.

A recent purchase of a large walk-in cooler will also assist the local farming operation in terms of extending the freshness of produce and providing additional storage space.

“It’s going to help us a bunch; it will help expand and improve our quality. The sooner you remove heat from produce, the longer the shelf-life,” William explained. “It will help all of our customers and I think it will open up some other wholesale markets for us. The cooler is bigger than what we need right now, so that will help us expand. We will have more space under roof, so we can also grow more pumpkins, which don’t necessarily need to be cooled, but we need space to store them. Right now we can only store around two semi loads of pumpkins in the building, and they are in our way, it makes life miserable to do everything else. But if we have this cooler, which will hold about three semi loads on its own, we’ll have more room to do more.”

The farm also purchased a second tractor to help expedite the tomato harvesting effort.

“I made a conveyor to harvest tomatoes last year and I was pulling that with the same tractor I sprayed with, which didn’t work very well. We got a hydrostatic tractor, a Hydro 86 (International Harvester), which will go really slow, as slow as people can pick tomatoes,” he said. “Our box truck also rotted out, so we bought one that’s bigger and in better shape.”

Harriman Farms will open for the season on Tuesday, April 1, at 1961 State Road 67 North, a short distance east of the junction of U.S. 231N and State Road 67N. The business can be reached by phone at 812-879-4623, or found online at harrimanfarms.com. Hours of operation will be Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., Saturdays from 9:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., and Sundays from 2:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m.